Sheep's Clothing

by Gary Lewis

  "Look," his voice began to sound a little worried. "If I shouldn't have said that, we can just-"

  Janice reached her finger up to press against his lips, stopping him mid-sentence. "It was perfect. Too perfect," she said while cleaning her face. "All of that was just to tell me you love me?"

  "Well, yeah. But I didn't mean to upset you, Jan."

  "You didn't," she said, finally drying her face and regaining her composure. She reached her right hand over to his left shoulder. He leaned right back into her face. "It was the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me," she said softly into his eyes as they pressed their mouths together for a long kiss.

  "I'd really like to skip this whole camping trip with them and spend it alone with you in there," David smiled as he nodded at her front door.

  His words rushed from her stomach into her chest as she considered it for a second. "But they'll think-"

  "Think it's one of us if we don't show. I know," David said with a reluctant tone. He put the car in reverse and wrapped his arm around the back of her seat to look behind them while he backed out.

  Janice remained quiet for the entire drive as she took in the night air and savored the moment. It felt almost surreal. Sitting with David at her side made her feel not only safe, but as if no matter what happened, it was alright as long as it was with him.

  Though the moon was only half full, its light cast across the branches to spread eerie shadows that stretched claws across the dimly lit dirt road surrounded by forest, shadows that snaked and clawed their way through the ground only to be obliterated by David's headlights.

  "We're almost there, babe," he said, reaching his right hand across the center console to grasp hers. She thought for a moment. It wasn't just his headlights. David's light illuminated her shadows and drove away the darkness. The time is right. Janice turned to him. "Me too," she said quietly.

  "What, Jan?" He glanced over for a second as he slowed down just a little.

  "I love you too, David."

  She felt his fingers grip tighter as they accelerated toward the trailhead.

  Red taillights reflected back through the darkness as they slowed their approach at the parking area.

  "Looks like the gang's all here," David said as they pulled in between Vance's pickup and Sarah's car. Another car was parked on the other side of Sarah's. Janice struggled through the dark to see it.

  "Is that?"

  Terry's gray station wagon sat apart from the others. "Yeah," David chuckled. "I guess he's competing with me for Pine Bluff's most clunker junker." Janice rolled her eyes and smiled as David turned on his flashlight.

  "They could've waited here for us," he said as he stood in front of the car, waiting for Janice to walk over beside him. "Stay close."

  She'd spent her entire life being meek and protected, but tonight, amongst the loud song of crickets and at David's side, she knew that she had nothing to worry about. Janice grabbed the flashlight from his hand and shined it upward in her face, attempting to make a scary grin. "I'm not afraid," she laughed as she turned to take the lead. "You just need to tell me where to go, mister."

  She heard his footsteps as he briskly caught up to her and the dark forest squeezed out every inch of light aside from their own. An owl hooted from somewhere behind them as they delved deeper into the woodlands and further from the world. Their flashlight was the only thing that separated their path from the pitch black wilderness. Crunching through sticks and leaves while pushing apart bushes and vines, they tread into an unknown realm where they didn't belong. But Janice felt okay with that. She slid her fingers down David's forearm to his wrist before clasping his hand in her own while they strolled between the chipping wooden bark of evergreen and conifer towers that crowded the darkness around them.

  #Vance#

  "How much you want to bet they don't show and we're left right where we started?" Vance asked while he squeezed his empty beer can, crushing it before tossing it into the crackling fire.

  "Did it really have to be so big?" Sarah asked.

  "What? This?" Vance chuckled. "That's what she said." He motioned both hands toward his groin.

  "The fire, dumbass."

  "Hell yeah. Ward off evil spirits and shit," he said, taking a moment to stare across the sky in a slow circle that stopped at the fire tower. "Or summon them." A loud belch issued forth from the pool of booze in his belly. "Whichever comes first."

  "So y'all used to come up here often?" Terry asked, still seated on his self-proclaimed favorite log that Vance had to help drag onto the clearing.

  "Oh yeah," Vance lurched over to grab Terry's shoulder and tug his nimble body back and forth. "Buddy, I've got some stories, lemme tell ya."

  "Oh no," Sarah covered her forehead and looked down.

  "But, oh yes!" he shouted, realizing how loud he was getting before pausing for a moment.

  "It was a dark," he said slowly in a loud tone. "A dark and stormy night. The moon was full," he swept his hand out across the sky.

  "Okay,” Sarah said. “Now he's officially full of shit."

  Vance laughed and lightened his voice. "Alright, so it wasn't stormy, but the moon might've been full."

  "Anyway, I get David and Tony, we must've been about ten. I get them to sneak out. See, back then their mommy and daddy were kinda..." Vance started shoving his index finger through a circle in his other hand and winked at them. "You know."

  "Yes, Vance, we know." Sarah said, folding her arms.

  Just then, Vance remembered the story he was trying to tell. "Oh yeah. So, I got them to sneak out with me and Sarah."

  "How'd y'all get around?" Terry asked as he poked at the fire with a long, slender stick.

  Sarah walked over to sit on the log beside Terry and laughed. "His dad had him on the weekends. He used to pass out drunk and this guy would climb in his old beat-up pickup truck to drive home to his mom," she said. Her giggle began to fade with the random snaps and pops of the fire issuing forth embers between Vance and them.

  "So, as I was saying," Vance continued as they sat at the log looking up across the fire at him. "I always had to listen to Tony all the way up here, whining about if we get in trouble." Vance stopped for a moment trying to remember where he left off.

  "I think you've had too much to drink," Sarah said.

  "Oh, I'm just getting warmed up. You should have a few, yourself."

  "I don't think that would be a good idea tonight," she said as she looked toward the woods in the darkness. "Actually, are you sure you're going to be okay? We don't need any bullshit way out here."

  "Believe me, I'm bullshit free," Vance swiped his hands outward. "Zero calorie bullshit here." Sarah laughed while Terry just looked back and forth at the two of them.

  She patted Terry's knee and looked at him. "You'll get used to it."

  "Anyway, so we're all chilling out on top of the tower, looking out at the night sky," Vance tried to continue as he busted out laughing.

  "Oh no," Sarah said, covering her face completely in her lap with both hands before gradually rising back up. "Not this one."

  "And Davie says 'I've gotta go down and pee.'" Vance tried to hold back the laughter that erupted from his lungs. "And Sarah's like, 'I can do it from up here,' and climbs down to the top of the ladder, hanging off that bar up there," Vance said, leaning back to point to the top of the tower.

  At that moment, Vance heard a loud, wooden knock from behind where they were seated. Sarah and Terry jumped up in opposite directions from the fire.

  "What was it?" Vance asked as they looked around at one another. He couldn't tell if the noise was their commotion or if they were responding to the sound. "Well?"

  "I saw something over there," Sarah pointed into the darkness of the woods as Vance peered in that direction, then toward Terry who stood wide eyed, his back to the fire.

  "I jumped because she did," Terry said.

  Vance reached behind his waist, drawing his revolver slowly from the holster he'd
fastened to the back of his belt as he raised his left hand to silence the others.

  "Y'all stick close to the fire," he said.

  "Did you have to bring that thing?" Terry asked.

  Sarah's waving hands glowed at the edge of Vance's peripheral vision. "Remember that David and Jan could be out there." It angered him a little that she thought she needed to remind him firearm safety. But then, he did get pretty loud earlier. It was only natural for the two of them to be worried about a drunk guy with a gun, he thought.

  "It's alright. I'm in control." He turned to nod his head up and down twice, making sure to give both Sarah and Terry a calm but firm eye contact.

  When he saw their shoulders begin to relax, Vance crept into the woodline, staring beyond what was visible as he listened intently. Only the sound of crickets played their foreboding melody, a reminder that the hour of the sun would not return for quite some time. In the absence of light, the trees looked dark gray, timeless as stone statues that stood in silent witness to this place.

  Vance gradually lowered his gun, resting it snuggly back into its holster. "What did it look like, Sarah?"

  "I don't know. It was dark." Her lack of attitude told him that she must truly be afraid. Walking backward with an occasional glance behind, he eventually turned back to the fire.

  The three of them started to sink back into their places around the glowing red embers that recently blazed with a fury that had since burned its way down into brightly lit coals eating away at the black remnants of wood, leaving white ash behind.

  "Who's next for firewood?" Vance asked a bewildered Sarah and Terry, who looked at each other and then to him. "Of course. Who else?" he sighed with a slight smile.

  "What could be taking them so long?" Sarah asked.

  Vance casually shrugged before tossing a few nearby sticks on top of the glowing embers.

  Terry cleared his voice to speak up. "I heard you say Davie earlier."

  Vance looked at him and flexed his eyebrows in confusion. "Did I?"

  As Vance tried to conjure the word from his recent memory, Sarah broke his concentration. "It was what Tony and Vance used to call him," she said with a light smile, leaning her head down, half turned to Terry. It had been a long time since Vance heard her voice sound so soft.

  He chuckled at her. "Must be what happiness sounds like in Sarah-ian."

  She tossed the twigs she had been anxiously snapping apart in his direction and laughed. "Shut the hell up."

  "Is that what you called him too?" Terry asked Sarah.

  "Nah," she said. "I called him a nosey little prick."

  Vance let out a sigh. "Sure ain't the same without Tony here, though." He continued rolling the burning coals around with a stick as the fire took on a new glow.

  "Sorry that I never got to know him better," Terry lowered his stare just below the flames.

  Vance looked over at him. "He was the kinda guy, you'd get in trouble and he'd take the fall for ya. No questions asked. He'd give the shirt off his back, just to..." Vance sunk deep into the stump that he sat on as he shook his head side to side.

  "This is really happening?" Sarah asked slowly as her eyes drifted into the rising embers in front of her. The bright, fiery glow danced across her face from the other side of the fire as her blonde hair shined with an orange hue. "Someone," she said. "One of us... is a monster." The fire crackled more loudly. "A werewolf." The fire reawakened with fresh heat as she continued to speak to it, while Vance and Terry listened. "And killing the rest of us? But why? How can this even be real?"

  Vance considered his next words for a moment as the tongues of flame brought back memories from not so long ago. "It's true, Sarah. I saw it too."

  "What?" her and Terry asked together.

  "See... My dad, he was going to lose the place. Back taxes."

  "The barn?" Terry asked.

  Vance looked him in the eyes and shook his head. "Everything."

  The fire snapped loudly as it began to cast a waving eerie glow across their faces. "I don't know why. I just can't stand up to the guy." Vance lifted his shirt to show them his back and sides, knowing that there must still be fresh bruises to add shading to overlapping scars, stripes across his back that bore witness to several different belts over the years.

  Terry's jaw dropped silently as Sarah tensed her eyebrows and lips, balling her fist to prop up her chin and turned her face away.

  "Anyway," Vance said, lowering his shirt. "The insurance payout was big on the barn and he told me I had to take care of it. Couldn't look like arson or it wouldn't cover it. So, I drove out to dad's folks' old property. Must've been about three in the morning. I'm out there in the dark barn, trying to get the hay to catch with this little lighter, but it won't burn. Walk back to the truck to grab some gas, knowing I can't use too much or it'll look suspect and I hear all this moaning in the distance." Vance waved his arm out to the left.

  "A person?" Terry asked.

  "Cows," Sarah said.

  Vance nodded at her. "I knew something had them shook up and thought it might be a bear or coyotes. But something had me spooked too. So I rushed into the barn, dug a hole in the middle of the hay bale, poured in some gas and lit it up. I figured, it being in the middle of the pile, nobody would know an accelerant was used to start it."

  Vance reached over to grab another can of beer and lifted it in front of him.

  "You sure that's a good idea?" Terry asked.

  "Course not, but I couldn't get the shit to catch fire without it," Vance said.

  "I think he was referring to the drink," Sarah said.

  "Oh. Well... I..." Vance stared down at his hand as he tried to recollect why he picked it up to begin with.

  "Enough about that," Sarah said. "So, what happened?"

  "Yeah, so it starts catching real big. I mean, big." Vance whirled his hands both upward, over his head. "And then I hear the most god-awful screeching sounds from the cattle across the field. You could hear them running and yelling all over out there. I was worried they'd stampede or something. Then it got quieter, but every now and then there'd be another one and then I heard like... A spring snapping or something too."

  "Must've been the fence," Sarah said.

  "Yup. Saw it on my way out," Vance added. "After the noise died down, the barn itself started to really burn, so I was walking back to my truck and there it was. Standing not thirty feet away. I could see it plain as day, with the fire. It stood on two legs, a little taller than me. Long, canine snout. Big, long ears," Vance motioned the shapes around his face, further emphasizing the ferocity of its appearance. "Covered in hair. Its shoulders were rising and falling with its breath. You've seen the movies, right? A werewolf. There's no other way around describing it. A big werewolf was standing there, looking straight at me. There was no way I could've beat it back to my truck and got outta there." Vance stopped and let out a huge huff of air as he let the weight come off his shoulders.

  Sarah lunged her palms outward and looked at him with the same expression as Terry. "Well?"

  "Well, what?" Vance asked.

  She shook her hands out at him. "What happened?"

  "Yeah," Terry said. "So, how'd you manage to escape?"

  "No idea," Vance said. "It walked toward me and just stopped and stared for, must've been a minute. And I walked backward to my truck." He laughed. "Thought I was going to shit myself."

  "Are you sure?" Sarah asked.

  "Positive." He looked across the fire and scanned side to side at both of their faces. "Guess I didn’t look very tasty."

  "Why didn't you tell anyone about it?" Terry asked.

  Sarah rejoined the discussion. "Yeah. Everyone who's died since then, having no idea about-"

  "About what?" Vance asked. "Hey everyone. Watch out. There's a werewolf roaming around," he said, tossing his stick into the fire in frustration. "Wouldn't have changed a damn thing. Besides, and say what? That I was busy burning down the family barn when this thing shows up?" Vance
stood up. "No. I just hightailed it outta there while it walked toward the road and I heard it howling from back there. That was it."

  As Terry and Sarah began talking, Vance thought he caught sight of something blink at the fire tower. He turned and watched the structure still standing tall in the darkness, a memorial to times long passed that towered above to remind him of what had been. The light flashed again across the metallic gray surface. "There it is again," he said as Sarah and Terry stilled to attention.

  Vance turned in the opposite direction to see a shaky white beam flicker from behind the shrubbery below. He cuffed his hands in front of his mouth and heaved back with a huge breath. "Bout damn time!" he shouted so loud that his words echoed back.

  “Ow!” Sarah shouted, covering her closest ear with a squint of her eyes. "How about a little more warning next time you pull that."

  A silhouette passed back and forth ahead of the glare as the light tilted down to the ground and David's shape began to take form just ahead of Janice as she swung the flashlight around until they were within speaking distance.

  "We're all here," David said. "What's next?"

  "Oh!" Terry jumped from his log, frantically slapping his pants.

  "Watch out," Vance shouted. "Those embers bite."

  "So, what are we all here for?" David's words pressed a little harder than before as Vance looked in his direction. Sarah and Terry walked closer from the side as Janice stood close to David. It was awkward, to be sure, but it didn't bother Vance quite as much as he thought it would.

  "Who's disarming the trap?" Sarah asked as the others looked in Terry's direction and Terry looked at Vance.

  Vance shrugged his shoulders with a laugh and rubbed the back of his head, looking at the grass between his rugged boots. "I guess the gig's up, Terry." Vance looked around at everyone. "There was no trap. It was just to try and lure out the monster."

  "You mean the killer," David said firmly.

  "Same difference," Vance said. "What's it to you?"

  Sarah stepped forward. "You two knock it off."

  "Yeah. We're all here together," Janice said, stepping from David's side as she paced gracefully through everyone to hold her hands out above the campfire. She slowly turned back toward everyone. The blazing furnace of felled forest licked tongues of flame behind her silhouette, casting long shadows across the ground as orange and red light danced across the dark traces that outlined her shirt and face. "It could be the last chance we have together."